Rose Among Dandelions
by bethos
Summary: Malcolm contemplates his going-nowhere passion for the lovely linguist, among other things.
1. Contemplation

Title: Rose Among Dandelions  
  
Author: Apocalypse  
  
Fandom: ENT  
  
Disclaimer: These characters belong not to me, though it grieves my heart greatly, but to Bermaga. Why? Because there is no justice.  
  
Pairing: Reed/Sato  
  
Warnings: Spoilers all over the place, up to "The Expanse (Pt I)" ...   
  
Rating: PG  
  
Summary: Malcolm contemplates his going-nowhere passion for the lovely linguist, among other things.   
  
Author's Note: Dude. My first R/S fic. Weird.  
  
She sits at her post, competent and serene: a far cry from the worried child she was when her feet first touched metal decks. He thought she was a fish out of water or, in his more flattering moments, a rose among dandelions. But now he knows better.  
  
He didn't think much of her at first. She was just somebody, just another silly girl who didn't know what she wanted. A silly, frightened girl, young and delicate and thoroughly out of her element, who screamed and cowered in the face of the kind of danger that would be bread and meat to them out here. On a ship with no small measure of competent, beautiful women at the top of their fields, she was just another face, just another expert, less confident than most.  
  
He'd been as friendly as he knew how to be, which admittedly wasn't saying much. He'd never got on well with people. He just hadn't got the knack. She'd been courteous to him, friendly in an almost detached way, as though she hadn't known what to make of him, either.   
  
And then, the first away mission they'd shared. Not alone, of course; the captain had been just as eager for action as the rest of them, but in more of a position to allow himself the indulgence. He reserved judgment on that, on the captain's methods. He still does, or at least, keeps his complaints private for the most part. A Reed would do things differently, not like these eager-eyed Americans with their penchant for interference … but a Reed is not in command, and Malcolm can't help but wonder if it's better this way.   
  
Dead bodies, hanging from the ceiling. It wasn't par for the course, but you didn't sign on for a dangerous adventure into outer space expecting cake and sherry from every quivering xenophobic you happened to pass.   
  
The schoolteacher couldn't handle it. It was too much for her delicate sensibilities, he remembered saying at the time, relating the story to Mayweather in the mess-hall. He'd wondered then if she would make it out here. If she would go home.   
  
And then he'd spoken to her about it, offered his commiserations as it were. The first rush of shock, of familiarity, of wondering if there wasn't more here than met the eye: she verbally lashed herself, her words hot with self-loathing and disappointment ... in a way that was so familiar, laced so intricately with a determination to fix things for the better, that he thought he might almost have been talking with a younger, female version of himself.   
  
"You didn't scream," she said as the conversation wound to a close. "Next time, neither will I."  
  
"Well," he'd answered, in his most awkward have-a-look-at-the-bright-side-will-you way, "hopefully we won't be running into any more aliens that want to turn our bodily fluids into sex drugs anytime soon."  
  
Her little smile in the midst of her angry self-berating … sardonic but amused, an expression that had struck him as somehow mature, older than someone so obviously innocent ought to have been able to wear on her face. "Thanks, Lieutenant," she'd said. The tone had been dry: you're a lot of help. But amused.  
  
He likes it when she thinks he's funny.  
  
He wonders why he chooses this moment to linger on, now as he watches her almost two full years later as she fiddles with the controls on her communications board.   
  
Perhaps it's the contrast …  
  
That timid schoolteacher seems so far in the past to him now, he almost wonders if they're the same person. The captain, his fingers drumming on the side of his command chair, turns to ask her a question that seems rife with impatience; she answers collectedly, coolly, as though her superior officer's inability to deal with his own impatience is not at all her problem.  
  
The captain is out of his chair, impatient, agitated; it's been a regular mood for him for awhile, since … the attack on Earth. The captain is not hard to read: He wonders what's coming, why they seem trapped in this calm before the storm, where the aliens are that they've been warned about.   
  
He asks his bridge crew, over and over, if their monitors are picking up anything unusual, anything new to report. The answers are invariably in the negative.   
  
He leaves the bridge, then, with T'pol in command: a silent presence, the Vulcan ice goddess with her odd way of sprawling in the command chair. Malcolm watches her for a moment, remembering things that disturb him endlessly.  
  
A breathy, hungry, desperate voice, ringing in his ears: "I've seen the way you look at me …"  
  
The endlessly unattainable had been in his grasp … and he'd found that somehow, strangely, he didn't want it anymore. Despite the undeniable hunger of his body to do what she asked of him, to take what she was suddenly, inexplicably giving, it was so easy to refuse, to do his duty and leave the honour of the subcommander intact.   
  
Can he attribute that … to Hoshi?  
  
No … not just to Hoshi.  
  
The incident with the cogenitor creeps up on his memory as well: a fellow armoury officer, a like mind in many ways, although certainly much more sure of herself … a woman who knew what she wanted and was more than capable of getting it, and himself a willing participant in the process.  
  
That wasn't the part that had touched him, however his physicality had been involved in it. The sex was as it always was: strictly physical, a release of the body, leaving him emotionally unsatisfied, as it always did … although physically he'd had something to smirk about for some days at least.  
  
Not that there'd been much smirking.  
  
He'd felt too guilty for that.  
  
Commander Tucker is the closest friend Malcolm thinks he has ever had. Trip can open him up, with the easy grace of his conversation, his casual charm; Trip can keep his secrets with the integrity of a gentleman of the old South. They can tease and know that neither will be hurt. They can fight, and say truly horrible things to each other, and still know that they are friends. This is the kind of true friendship that Malcolm has never before known, and treasures to his heart more deeply than almost anything else that he has found aboard the Enterprise.  
  
And when this friend, this true friend, this best friend above all best friends, with whom he shares everything … needed him, could have used his help, his advice, something from him, he'd been off chasing a bit of tail in the armoury.   
  
Malcolm is still disgusted with himself.   
  
And then … the attack on Earth.  
  
Malcolm can't help wondering if he damaged his friendship with Trip irreparably in the incident with "Charles" the cogenitor. Its suicide had hurt his friend deeply, changed his outlook on the universe in general and on his captain in particular; Malcolm wonders, if he had been more available for his friend at that first time of need, whether or not Trip would have been more ready to accept his empathy when the Xindi took out millions of human lives and stole the engineer's little sister away.  
  
Now there is angry, vengeful, bitter Trip: a Trip Tucker Malcolm had never imagined could exist in his easygoing, cheerful, sometimes obnoxious best friend.   
  
Malcolm is still his best friend; a Reed does not desert a sinking ship. Loyalty is everything, personal or professional.   
  
The attack has changed so many people aboard the Enterprise. But not Malcolm. It's too strange, too abstract for Malcolm to understand. No one he knows has been taken. And the numbers … millions of people, killed … it's just too much for him to understand. Really, he doesn't need to. He's a soldier, fighting for a cause; the cause is freedom, the cause is justice, the cause is vengeance. He doesn't feel these things in the deeply personal way some of the others do. But he sees the pain in his best friend's face, watches his easygoing captain transformed into this agitated, angry, vengeance-driven person that he barely recognizes. And he's seen his fish out of water, his rose among dandelions, become a tigris in defense of the ship and its captain.  
  
"Anyone who has a problem with Captain Archer and the Enterprise," she has said on more than one occasion, in a voice as hard as diamond, "will have to come through me."  
  
Malcolm doubts that anyone will take her up on it.  
  
He'd gone with Trip to visit the devastated remains of his Florida hometown. It hadn't been a good idea; it would bring home the images too hard, leave them seared into his friend's brain. Malcolm wonders what it's like – does Trip imagine her there, slipping into the chasm's mouth? Or touched by the same fires that hewed holes in the skin of the planet, perhaps … maybe he sees his sister Elizabeth with her flesh seared away, her bones melting in the intense heat of the blast. Maybe he sees his sister further away from the impact of the blast, fleeing for her life, knowing that death is coming but finding it inevitable … or trying vainly to save another's life, sacrificing herself in some way in the face of impending doom so that another could escape. Malcolm drops the chain of morbid imagination that he's been following; he has no way of guessing what's going on in Trip's head or what the deaths of those millions who were killed in the Xindi attack might have looked like.   
  
Trip has not spoken much of his sister, neither before nor after her death. Malcolm has no idea what his friend sees in his mind's eye when he thinks of her.   
  
On the return trip, Malcolm barely recognized his friend. The spine straight as though reinforced with steel, the eyes set at some distant point on the horizon – never looking at Malcolm, never looking back – the nostrils flared and quivering with suppressed anger and grief, his face frozen into a mosaic of vengeance.  
  
Malcolm feels strangely adrift amidst these new crewmates. Only Travis Mayweather seems to understand.  
  
"It's weird, isn't it?" he said softly to Malcolm over a half-hearted lunch the day before the Enterprise left dock. "It's just … weird."  
  
Why Travis? Malcolm didn't know. Travis had lost family before, family he cared about deeply, so he could vaguely understand the losses of his crewmates, but he had no real identification with Earth as a planet. He hadn't been born there, he'd visited dozens of other worlds and spent almost as much time on them; he'd trained there for a brief stint before being posted to the NX-01, but that was all.   
  
Malcolm wishes he knows the words to ask Travis what it feels like, being on the ship now. The rest of the crew have all suffered at the hands of the Xindi; their home has been violated. But not his home.   
  
The rest of the crew … with a few exceptions.  
  
Malcolm's glance slides away from his tactical board to touch on the woman in the command chair again. She is cool, serene, unconcerned, the essence of patience: a rock of Vulcan calm in a sea of humanity. Yes, she is beautiful … but he's come to learn that her beauty is like that of a finely constructed weapon, one that it is impossible to wield; it's the sort of beauty best admired … from a distance, not up close.   
  
What are her motives? Why would she disobey direct orders from the Vulcan High Command to stay on board the ship?  
  
Ship's gossip, according to Travis – Malcolm's source for all such nonsense whenever he happens to need it – is that Captain Archer has penetrated that façade of ice and logic and found a warm, yielding, sex-hungry babe beneath it. Travis's turn of phrase was remarkably adept; he found words to express both the rumour and his own somewhat contemptuous opinion of it at the same time.  
  
Malcolm is inclined to agree with Travis. Between the captain and the science officer, he sees signs of nothing more intimate than a healthy respect between commanding officer and immediate inferior; a growing professional relationship with perhaps tinges of personal admiration but nothing even approaching a sexual or romantic level.   
  
Malcolm also knows that he's hardly the person to go to for observations of that sort; but he feels adept enough to consider such an idea poppycock, at the very least.  
  
Defying the orders of her home planet to remain aboard with her human crewmates … well, T'pol has certainly changed since the beginning as well.  
  
Her contempt for humanity, the way she seemed to be barely containing her irritation with her assignment, replaced by the serene, patient logic … a woman of class and integrity who deals remarkably well with being trapped in a foreign environment, foreign culture, with the not unprejudiced eyes of a much younger species constantly on her (and often, on her posterior).   
  
At first, T'pol was just … a sexy woman to fantasize about. Now she is a superior officer, a formidable creature in her own right, a person to be wondered about and probably never fathomed … with her own honour, which he has learned over the past two years of service is something to respect. 


	2. Colleagues

"Asteroid field ahead, Subcommander," Travis remarks mildly, glancing at his scanner.   
  
"Can you maneuver to avoid while maintaining approximate course heading?" T'pol inquires.  
  
"It'll add a few hours to our ETA, sir."  
  
"Very well," T'pol remarks, leaving the command chair. "You have the bridge, Lieutenant Reed; I will consult with the captain."  
  
Malcolm acknowledges the science officer's command and takes the command chair with barely a second thought. The crew functions as a well-oiled machine. He is proud to be among their number.  
  
His parents would not be so proud.  
  
The thought comes unexpectedly. His father's face is a black rush of emotion that leaves his knuckles white as he grips the arm of the command chair. A Reed serves where a Reed is needed. His own words, angry and bitter and thrown back in his face.  
  
"No, son. A Reed should serve where Reeds have always served. We are the sons of the sea." His father's voice; cold, scathing, but beginning to heat, beginning to rise in volume as the man's face changed colour, as his temper rose.   
  
What is this if not a new sea? A sea without water? A new horizon to explore?  
  
The words still ring in his ears: the avenue of your cowardice.  
  
"I am *not* a coward!" he'd screamed in fury. "I am an explorer!"  
  
His father smiled bitterly, shook his head, and walked away.  
  
He just … walked away.  
  
Malcolm has not spoken to him since.   
  
He'd spoken a letter home into the recorder, back when he thought the entire ship had been destroyed and that he and Commander Tucker were at death's door. He explained everything. He apologized for words said in anger and forgave words said likewise. He set the record straight.  
  
When the Enterprise rescued them, one of Malcolm's first conscious acts had been to destroy his letters to Earth. He'd taken the data-chips, shot them, and flushed their remains into open space.   
  
He'd almost gone back. The Xindi attack on Earth had brought much of the crew closer together with their families, binding them together into solidarity against the terror of the unknown threat.  
  
Malcolm had met Maddy for lunch in a tiny Marseilles restaurant while trying to decide whether or not to arrange a meeting with his mother and father.  
  
"Father doesn't know what to think," Maddy had said. "I think he'd find everything much easier if you found some way of dying for the sake of humanity."  
  
"Lovely," Malcolm said sourly.   
  
"You're far too complicated alive. At least if you were martyred he could mourn you properly."  
  
"I'm working on it," Malcolm said. "Unfortunately I seem to be rather attached to my life."  
  
"I'm glad," Maddy said. "I shouldn't think you'd be as handsome as a corpse."  
  
"I hope not," Malcolm replied wryly.  
  
And the conversation had turned to other things. Madeleine, bless her, had teased him about the blonde waitress who'd served them their very French food, and in a further attempt to make him blush, asked him needling questions about that charming Starfleet girl who'd called asking questions about his dining preferences.  
  
"Will we be welcoming a new Mrs. Malcolm Reed to our table next Christmas?"   
  
His gaze slips back to where Hoshi sits at her post.   
  
If only …  
  
T'pol returns to the bridge. "Thank you, Lieutenant," she said. "Ensign, adjust course heading to avoid the asteroid field as you suggested."  
  
Malcolm returns to his post and life on the Enterprise bridge continues without noticeable incident.  
  
He'd met Hoshi on the way back from their brief planet leave. Sharing a shuttlepod with Trip meant that out of concern for his friend, Malcolm hadn't spoken much to the other passengers.  
  
"You're not staying on Earth?" he has asked her quietly. He never really expected her to; he'd seen the hesitant child transform to the competent woman and there was no doubt that Hoshi had her space legs. But somehow he'd felt that she might appreciate the acknowledgment, that someone had really noticed the change.  
  
"Captain Archer is still going to need a translator, Expanse or no Expanse," was Hoshi's reply.   
  
"I'm glad," Malcolm said to her.  
  
She looked at him, surprised. "Glad, Lieutenant?"  
  
"I am … proud to serve with you, Ensign." His voice was quiet, his face earnest. He hopes that she knows how much he meant those words.  
  
She flashed him a smile: brief, appreciative. And then she'd turned solicitous inquiry on their friend Commander Tucker; the conversation was over.   
  
Part of him wishes she knew that he appreciates her on a level beyond the professional … that his words mean more than just what they say, that when he says he's proud to serve with her he really means that he yearns to stand by her side as lover or husband or boyfriend or companion or in any capacity that she would have him be …  
  
But mostly he's glad she'll never know. Because he doesn't want to lose those brief flashes of her smile, the ones that feel like they're only for him. He doesn't want to lose the wry sense of humour, the insightful wit, the determined bravery and warm compassion that she brings to life. He doesn't want to lose her as his friend. He's had precious few in his life, and he cherishes them deeply.  
  
His duty is to the ship and her crew, not to his heart. Even if Hoshi learned of the aching emptiness he feels because he loves her, what could she do about it? Discipline. Loyalty. Honour. The watchwords of the Reed code. How can he abandon those, just for the love of a woman, even if the universe were to turn completely upside-down and she were to feel even a shadow of what he does in return? Who would he be without his love of duty, his need to for success, his passion for his work?  
  
He'd be a stranger. And if he abandons himself, he would certainly never be worthy of Hoshi.  
  
Her voice breaks him out of his thoughts as she turns in her chair. "Subcommander," she says, "may I have your permission to leave the Bridge? Crewman Nelson can take over from here but I've got to get a sandwich or something."  
  
It's her second consecutive shift. Malcolm knows, because he's on his second, too.   
  
"Of course, Ensign," is T'pol's calm reply. "Do not push yourself too hard. It would be illogical to deny yourself physical necessities."  
  
"And it's not like anything's happening here," Travis murmurs under his breath. His complaint earns him a smile of commiseration from the linguist and an arched eyebrow from the science officer, although T'pol chooses to let the remark pass.   
  
Intraship communication: "Hey Malcolm, are you busy?"  
  
Malcolm tries to decipher Trip's tone. His voice sounds weary but not entirely without a trace of his ordinarily cheerful disposition … or is that only a result of Malcolm's imagination? It's difficult to tell; he has such worries over Trip's welfare that he might be grasping at straws, hunting for any sign of improvement. "What can I do for you, Commander?"  
  
"I'd like you to come down here and take a look at this torpedo array for me … I think it's on the blink."  
  
Well, that's descriptive, thinks Malcolm, but out of respect for his friend's current emotional state – however well the chief engineer believes himself to be hiding it. "On the blink?"  
  
"I want to make sure it's ready to go. Can you make some time?"  
  
Trip is antsy and hungry for vengeance. He wants to make certain that the weapons are configured for maximum destructive capability. He never let his sister Elizabeth have any trouble from schoolyard bullies … and these Xindi are, to him, equivalent to the biggest bullies on the playground.  
  
"On my way, Commander," Malcolm replies, getting an acknowledging nod from T'pol. "Hold the lift, will you, Ensign?"  
  
Hoshi nods. "Sure." 


	3. Friends

The lift doors close on them. The silence feels heavy for a moment as each waits for the other to speak.  
  
"Malcolm?" Hoshi says.  
  
He feels his heart thump in his chest at the sound of his own name, and wishes, for a bare instant, that it would stop beating – concerned, despite all scientific evidence suggesting its impossibility, that her sharp linguist's ears might be able to hear his heartbeat. Of course, then he would be dead, which would be terribly inconvenient but much less embarrassing than this social awkwardness to which he seemed doomed for all his days.  
  
"Yes?" How articulate he is today, how dashing, debonair … but somehow he keeps the scathing sarcasm of his inner self from making him look too uncomfortable. Or so he hopes.  
  
"Do you think he's all right?" Hoshi squares her shoulders, her arms folded over her chest. The action somehow makes her appear more vulnerable.  
  
"You mean Commander Tucker?"   
  
Hoshi nods, without seeming to notice how idiotic the question sounds as it hangs briefly in the air. Of course she means Commander Tucker. It's awfully nice of her to pretend it's a reasonable question, though.   
  
"I don't know," Malcolm says. "He's … not himself lately." Understatement of the century.  
  
"It's taken a lot out of him," Hoshi says softly. "I mean … it's hit all of us, really, one way or another. Even T'pol. I saw her when she came back aboard from planet-leave and I thought she wanted to hit something."  
  
Malcolm gives her a rueful look. "He wants revenge. I … can't say I blame him."  
  
"Will it help, though?" Hoshi shakes her head. "I just …"   
  
"He was hit very hard," Malcolm admits. "But … I don't know what to do." He wishes he could better explain, that he does all that he can think of but it'll never be enough, he's terrible with people. "I tried to talk to him about it, but he threw it in my face … I don't think he's ready yet."  
  
Why is he telling this to her? She must have her own worries, her own problems … he shouldn't burden her with his. But her expression is sympathetic, with traces of something else that he can't quite identify, as she nods.  
  
"I wish there was something I – or any of us – can say," Hoshi says, turning away from him to stare at the closed doors of the lift as it heads for the armoury. "Trip's been like a big brother to me out here. I hate what this is doing to him."  
  
Malcolm gives her a sympathetic expression even as he suppresses deep inner triumph at "like a big brother to me". The ship's gossips, wrong yet again … if it weren't beneath him to join in, he'd gloat about it to Travis. Hoshi and Trip … what a laughable idea! Why has he ever given it any credence? How could he ever have lost any sleep over such a silly concept?  
  
And what kind of person is he, secretly rejoicing about Hoshi's platonic emotion for his best friend when he ought to be worrying about his friend's inability to mourn for his sister properly?   
  
Selfish. Disloyal. And hardly honourable, either.   
  
"I hope he'll be all right," Malcolm says. "I worry about him, too."  
  
Why shouldn't Trip have her, since Malcolm is so obviously unworthy of her affection?  
  
Well, except for that she just told him that she thinks of Trip has her big brother …  
  
And the lift's doors open.   
  
"Thanks, Malcolm," Hoshi says. "You're a good friend."  
  
Ha. Such a good friend, rejoicing in Trip's ill fortune. Not that Trip has shown any signs of being romantically interested in Hoshi either, come to think of it, but it's still the principle of the thing.  
  
"So are you," Malcolm replies as he leaves the lift and heads down the corridor towards the armoury.  
  
Time passes, as it is wont to do. As it turns out, Trip hasn't improved at all; he wants Malcolm to make absolutely certain the weapons are outfitted to their maximum destructive capacity. He wants to make certain that Malcolm understands that he plans to go through with this, that his thirst for revenge will not be sated until he's destroyed the aliens that have done this to him, done this to his sister, and their reasons be damned.   
  
Malcolm is sympathetic, or at least, as sympathetic as he knows how to be … he does his duty, assures the chief engineer that everything is ship-shape and Bristol fashion, and leaves the armoury. He notifies the bridge that he will be taking a brief break from his duties in order to refresh himself, and receives word from Captain Archer that he's to take as long as he needs, so long as he's prepared to go back on-shift should anything interesting happen.  
  
Malcolm allows himself a small smile at the Captain's turn of phrase. Should anything interesting happen. Right.   
  
He heads for his quarters. He could use a shower, a nap, and some food: refueling the body is important to the pursuit of duty, after all.  
  
There's a mail waiting light at the computer terminal in his quarters. It's text only. He instructs the computer to open it, and glances at the screen, wondering who would be sending him a text-only message in the middle of the day.  
  
The words flash green across the flat screen:   
  
LIEUTENANT – IF YOU'RE OFF-SHIFT, WANT TO COME TO THE MESS-HALL AND GET A SANDWICH OR SOMETHING? WE COULD PROBABLY BOTH USE THE COMPANY. – H.S.  
  
Malcolm, in the midst of stripping off his uniform, pauses and stares at the screen, his heart thumping in his chest as he ponders what it might mean that she's specifically requested his company. It probably doesn't mean anything more than it sounds like it does. They're both tired – the whole crew, really – and she probably thinks he needs to blow off some steam.   
  
Maybe she's trying to draw him out of his shell again. People always seem to do want to do that, although for the most part, except when ordered otherwise, Hoshi has been one to respect his need for privacy. Or possibly she wants to continue their discussion regarding their mutual concerns for the well-being of Commander Tucker. But whatever it is, because it's from Hoshi, it's far more important than any nap or shower could ever be.   
  
He finishes getting dressed again and heads out of his quarters and toward the mess-hall. That he loves her, there is no question … and that she could never look on him as anything more than a friend and colleague is also a certainty in his mind. And yet there are all these moments – these insane, heart-stopping moments of impossibility possibility, wonders always quenched or bottled or otherwise scolded away. He lives in suspense between one moment of wild hope to the next … and he loves her all the more for giving them to him, these shadows, these cruel, tantalizing glimpses of what it might be like should the universe take leave of its senses and she were to love him in return.  
  
She is a rose among dandelions; not a delicate flower amidst the tougher, more adaptable plants. Roses are beautiful, but they're tough. Malcolm doesn't know much about gardening, but he has vague memories of his mother insisting that the roses be pruned, or else their robust health might choke out all other vegetation in her garden … and if there's one thing he knows for certain about roses, it's that their slender, delicate stems have wicked thorns.  
  
Hoshi has secret thorns, ones she herself doesn't even know about, and they have pricked his heart. He bleeds from their touch, even as he longs for it to continue. He knows that a relationship between them must be impossible – to approach her as a suitor would be to jeopardize far, far too much for it even to be a possibility within the realm of consideration – but he can watch his thorned beauty from afar, bask in her strength of will and her compassion, and let the wild hopes rule over his dreams.  
  
And he can certainly meet her in the mess-hall, for a sandwich or something, when he's off-shift. Because friends and colleagues can do that, and it doesn't have to mean anything at all. 


End file.
